For my Mama and Hosa. Merry Christmas 2009.

Last night my family sat down to watch The Homecoming. Everyone was in town for Christmas Dinner a night early, and it was kind of cool to be watching the original Walton’s movie with my sisters and mom, since we actually lived right there in Walton Country back when the tv show was so popular. A lot of you know that SuziCate and I went to elementary school together up in Nelson County, but you may not be aware that our school was right across the street from the original Walton home written about by Earl Hamner.

SuziCate can tell you some great stories about the people behind the characters in the series, so I’ll leave that up to her. In my family we have our own reasons for wanting to watch the movie, namely, Maggie’s favorite scene when Mama Walton exclaims over her “Chris-mas Cac-tus.” I have to admit I get a little teary-eyed when Daddy Walton gives John Boy an Indian writing tablet because though John Boy wasn’t doing exactly what was expected of him, especially as the eldest son during the Depression, he was following his heart and they were supporting that.

Between watching the movie and all the talking and laughing we were doing, I got to thinking about homecomings. Over the past 18 months I’ve enjoyed a serendipitous string of reunions, reconnections and homecomings with people and places meaningful to my life. Some connections proved precious still, maybe even more so than before; others are what they maybe always have been ~ simply bittersweet place cards in time, with no obvious purpose and yet no definitive end.

Next I started thinking about Homecoming ~ as in, the high school dances ~ and it surprises me that I really don’t remember not only the dances but who I went with to the dances. I remember my sophomore year only because I went with the boy who always got away. Though he’d asked me to the dance three weeks earlier, by the time it came around, he’d already come . . . . and gone. He spent the evening singing Heartache Tonight and I spent it wishing we were as much in love as another couple there appeared to be. Quite frankly, it was not what I expected and I was majorly disappointed.

My junior year, I wasn’t even invited to the dance. Back then, girls didn’t much go alone or in groups and I’d broken up with my boyfriend at the end of the summer (yep, for the boy who always got away). We’d also moved 10 miles from town and outside the local calling area. Like Bad Luck Schleprock, I was wowzy-wowzy wo-wo-wo-ing my way through my days and my friends eventually became annoyed and distant. I was a pretty pathetic teenager.

Normally I’d spend my time sulking in my room, listening to the radio and crying myself to sleep and on the night of the dance I’m sure I was doing just that because of course, my life was over: no friends, no date, no dance. Loser! And this is the way I’d have remembered the night, if I had remembered it at all, if I hadn’t stumbled on my 1980 diary a few years back.

My mom and stepdad weren’t overly involved in my life ~ not counting the time my date and I went to the drive-in movie and looked over to see them waving at us two cars away. I could normally keep my drama to myself (or so I thought), but on this night my parents decided that I wasn’t going to be allowed to drown in my misery on their watch. They somehow planned an impromptu evening on the town and whisked my self-centered little butt up to Charlottesville’s UVA Corner.

While my classmates drank down on party road, stood around the high school cafeteria, or necked in the parking lot, I sat in the historic downtown Paramount Theatre and watched Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, had drinks ~ at 16! ~ in the hot spot bar, The Mousetrap, and was treated to dinner at The Virginian, an iconic UVA Corner dining locale and, I was fascinated to learn at the time, a gay bar back when Hosa was in college. The evening ended, hours later, over Grillswiths at the legendary and long-gone University Diner.

Forgetting that night and recalling only my teenage dramatic angst says something about me that I’m not pleased to acknowledge but feel the obligation to admit. Too often I had expectations of the way I wanted things to go in my life and when they didn’t flow according to my wishes, I’d basically shut down and brood over what wasn’t going to be. I think a lot of girls, and women, do that by nature, and I personally believe that the depression I’d felt most of my life was essentially the result of choosing to stay in my box and then, when it proved to be empty, shut the lid and lie down in the dark.

Going out to Charlottesville took a little bit of creative initiative on my parent’s part, not to mention a whole lot of patience to deal with an ungrateful adolescent. I don’t recall much of our conversations or if we really even had any but I remember how I felt, being in the city at night, equal parts anonymous spectator and virgin participant, alone in my sadness but also so absolutely not. Though it took me years to appreciate exactly what they did, they should know they unknowingly poked a tiny hole in my box. That hole let through not only a little ray of sunshine but a view of what’s out there and who you can venture to be if you set your expectations aside and let yourself enjoy your life ~ simply, creatively, actively.

At the end of the movie, Daddy Walton, feared dead in a bus accident, walks miles through the snowy mountains to arrive home late on Christmas Eve. The family gathers around while he doles out the gifts he brags he wrangled from Santa. While my parents haven’t exactly stolen from the Fat Man for me, I’ve had my share of surprises. After a much needed but emotional visit to my childhood home this past October, I walked into my parent’s kitchen to find Hosa slaving over not only his special homemade spaghetti sauce recipe, but a separate vegetarian version just for me. And my mom, usually happier to let others do the public speaking, made a fantastic toast after Thanksgiving this year and publicly awarded me with The Pocketbook to take along on my upcoming travels. So sorry Mama Walton, but I’d say that pretty much tops even your beautiful Christmas Cactus.

The Virginian at the UVA Corner

Hey, what’s a Grillswith? A divine dessert of grilled Donuts, vanilla ice cream & chocolate sauce.